Reviewed the Asus EEE Pad Transformer today and played some games on it

After playing with the Asus EEE Pad Transformer during these last days i finally managed to publish the review for it on my tablet dedicated site, tabletbite.com .

So please go ahead and read the review of the Asus EEE Pad Transformer over there.

I’m not going to get into details in here, but I will tell you a couple of words about the device.

First, the tablet is very solid built, with a nice metallic and soft textured plastic casing and a sheet of Gorilla Glass on the front face. It’s wider than other tablets, but that makes it actually more comfortable to use for a longer time. You get a 10.1 inch IPS display with 1280 x 800 px resolution, so probably the best screen you can find on a 10 inch tablet right now.

And inside there’s capable hardware, with a Nvidia Tegra 2 platform, 1 GB of memory, 16/32 GB storage and proper connectivity options.

Asus EEE Pad Transformer – best 10 inch Android tablet right now

All these powered by Android 3.0 HoneyComb might sound like a dream come true but the end product is not as good as you might think and that’s mainly because of the software glitches and hiccups that come along with HoneyComb right now, an OS still new and unstable. There’s also the known problem with applications, as you have few HoneyComb native apps in the Market right now and we’re not sure when this will change.

Anyway, see the clips below for more details about this particular tablet. First, one speaking about the exterior:

And another one with details on hardware and performances:

There’s also the docking station I should mention which takes battery life of the tablet to around 10-12 hours during everyday use, plus offers some extra features and a regular keyboard. In fact, when combining the tablet and the dock you get a device pretty similar to a 10 inch netbook both in terms of size, weight and capabilities. Still, this won’t run Windows like a regular 10 inch mini laptop does.

Here’s what you get when conecting the slate and the dock

Also had the chance to play a couple of games on the Asus EEE Pad Transformer, and while i couldn’t actually try any of the titles in the Tegra Zone (which contains games specially designed for Tegra devices), I did find some nice titles on the Market, most of them available for free. See the clip below for details:

So that’s pretty much it with the Transformer, a tablet with a bunch of strong points and one major aspect dragging it down: overall user experience. Since the OS can be sluggish and can even freeze from time to time, this would greatly damage you everyday experience with this tablet to the point you can get exasperated by it. And this is why I can’t really recommend the Transformer right now, despite the fact that the hardware is almost impeccable and the price is very very good. And despite the fact that this is the best 10 inch Android tablet right now, cheaper and with a better display than its main competitor, the Motorola Xoom.

So what can i recommend? Well, actually the iPad 2, and you can see why in this other post comparing the iPad 2 with the EEE Pad Transformer.